


Om Apadamapa Hataram Dataram

by ladysisyphus



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga
Genre: Canon-Typical Cannibalism, M/M, Romantic Vore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:28:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21712222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladysisyphus/pseuds/ladysisyphus
Summary: The Junkyard is changing, and the Embryon changing with it.
Relationships: Heat/Serph
Comments: 1
Kudos: 22





	Om Apadamapa Hataram Dataram

The entire wing was empty by the time Serph got there, and he wondered if they wouldn't have cleared out the entire _base_ if he hadn't given them explicit orders to hold down the fort. Gale, long acknowledged as the bravest of them all when it came to weathering such tantrums, stood the closest to ground zero, and even he didn't venture closer than the karma terminal at the far end. "His actions have provoked an unusual response among our comrades," Gale said, looking at the empty corridors as though he couldn't imagine why everyone else had felt compelled to give such a wide berth.  
  
Serph motioned Gale just to make sure everyone stayed out until he'd had a chance to settle matters (though he doubted keeping everyone at their already-established distances would be a problem) and set off down the hall. Before he could open the door to the strategy room, he heard a loud crash, the exact tone and volume of a chair's being pitched across the room and destroyed upon impact, followed by a roar that was only vaguely human. Gale had been correct in his assessment that none among the Embryon had ever given their hot-headed member's tantrums such a wide berth before -- but then again, those tantrums had never before included destroying furniture.  
  
Heat turned to the open door and froze, as though uncertain whether his leader's arrival made things better or worse. In that gap, Serph stepped inside, locking the door behind them; there was no need to tempt anyone else's curiosity. "Go away," Heat said, though by the time he did, they were both shut inside. Serph braced for a chair in the face, but none was immediately forthcoming, so he walked over to the table at the center of the room and leaned against the edge of it.  
  
As he moved, Heat stepped back into the farther recesses of the room, past the place where the central illumination started to fade. "Just ... leave me alone." He folded his arms across his chest, though Serph could see that his right arm moved into that position with some difficulty.  
  
Serph glanced around the room and saw that the room's furniture had been dented and banged, some pieces beyond use or even recognition. Somehow, though, he suspected that Heat's extra care for his arm had not been the result of this disaster, but the cause of it. He furrowed his brow at Heat, and Heat sighed, shifting so he was more clearly cradling his arm to his chest, no longer making any bones about the injury. "I'll be fine." Heat shrugged. "I'll straighten up."  
  
Once, before everything had changed, that would have been enough -- Heat's word had always been as good as anyone else's, if not even sometimes a little better, and his assurance that his rage was over had always been sufficient for Serph to leave him to his own devices. Now, though, Serph could tell that something was wrong, that maybe even something had _always_ been wrong and he'd never known what he was seeing before. Everyone spoke about how Sera's arrival had changed everything, but sometimes Serph wondered if the truth might be that everything was still exactly the way it had always been, and they'd simply not known to notice before now.  
  
After a minute of silence, Heat sighed and leaned back against the wall, shutting his eyes. "It just ... it never used to hurt," he said, and his voice was hushed, meant for Serph's ears only. "Not like this. Not like it wouldn't stop."  
  
But now it did. Serph stood with his hands gripped slightly on the edge of the table, neither moving close nor drawing away, giving Heat the chance to come forward in his own time. The pain had made Heat skittish, like ( _a wounded animal_ , Serph thought, except he didn't know what that was) a frightened enemy, and he'd covered his fear with anger.   
  
At last, Heat stepped up, and instead of offering his arm, began undoing the zipper that drew a line straight down his belly. Serph stood patiently by as Heat unfastened his grey Embryon armor piece by careful piece, wanting to offer help but knowing better. Heat's hands searched and tugged clumsily at the seams in the material, and Serph gave him what little privacy -- a word neither of them had even known just a short time previous -- he could by looking away from Heat's clothing and down at his own, trying to locate the gaps and fastenings of his own attire. Had he ever taken it off before? Did he even know what his body looked like beneath? Had they been monsters under there all along?  
  
Finally, Heat grabbed the lower hem of the tight black shirt beneath it all and tugged it up over his head, revealing that the source of his distress was not his arm, but his chest; his entire right side was bruised yellow and purple, and a thick gash trickled blood from his shoulder halfway down his ribs. That, too, was new, the lingering injuries -- as was the ability to heal them, but Heat had shown no indication of learning such a skill, and his pride had doubtless been what had kept him from asking anyone else. That would have been a sign of weakness, and Heat never wanted to be weak.  
  
Serph raised his hand and beckoned Heat close, and Heat came toward him, until they were within easy reach of one another. Serph placed his fingers over the wide bruise, and Heat winced as Serph made contact, leading Serph to wonder if he'd caused Heat worse injury with even that gentle touch.  
  
"No," said Heat, and a flicker of a smile tugged at his mouth, despite his best effort to keep on a prohibitive scowl. "...Your fingers are cold."  
  
Appropriate: hot and cold, fire and ice. Who would've known the two of them might turn out to be such counterparts? Serph took a deep breath and began the mantra, a chant that already seemed familiar for all its newness: _om apadamapa hataram dataram sarva sampadam loka bhi ramam sri rama bhuyo bhuyo namamyaham--_  
  
Without warning, however, he stopped -- or, more accurately, _was_ stopped by a wild urge inside him that he might have been able to control, had he seen it coming. Instead, it took him by surprise, and thus took him by force. He leaned in to Heat's body, touching his lips to the base of the long, deep wound. The mantra still fresh on his lips, he dragged his tongue up Heat's side, tasting the blood and salt of Heat's skin, feeling the injury begin to close up in his wake. Slowly, he moved toward Heat's shoulder, straightening his spine as he went, and when he reached the place where the gash ended, he let his mouth linger there as he swallowed, fighting the urge to open his mouth and take Heat further in.  
  
That consumptive drive fled as quickly as it had set upon him, however, and was replaced with the painfully vague certainty that what he had just done had been wrong, that it was all wrong -- not just the urge to devour Heat, for he knew that eating comrades was beyond out of the question, but the need he felt to have Heat inside him without devouring him, the desire to place his mouth unnecessarily on already-healed skin and do it again. Serph felt a hollow hunger that started not in his belly, but lower, in the flesh between his legs that he didn't have to have seen to know was there, and all he had to do was look up at Heat's face to see the same gnawing need mirrored in the warm body before him.  
  
And that was perhaps the worst part of all of this: how their awakened bodies had betrayed them so completely, how they had all become utterly alien to themselves. Serph had learned to _want_ , and wanting was one thing when it came from the outside force that had learned to use his body as its vessel, and another entirely when it came from the skin he'd thought he'd known. He wanted to swallow Heat whole, to bite into his throat and tear out the warmth there, to pin him to the ground and put his mouth in all the places his uniform had hidden before. He wanted to hold Heat's face down against the table and lean over him, gnawing at his spine through his skin, accusing Heat of things that couldn't possibly be true and that he didn't understand anyway, letting the hunger between his legs take control of him until he was as lost in it as he was inside Varna, powerless and free.  
  
Instead, he stood upright again, and Heat stepped back, yanking his shirt down with perhaps a bit too much force across smooth, pale skin. "...Thanks," he said, looking at Serph, and Serph could see in his eyes both perfect understanding and an impossible distance. Heat picked up his cloak from where he'd tossed it on the floor and wrapped it around his shoulders, never taking his eyes off Serph all the while, as though the second he looked away, even just to blink, the monster would return.  
  
But eventually he did blink, and Serph was still there when his eyes opened that fraction of an instant later, still himself -- whatever that was now. Giving him one last long, wary stare, Heat turned for the door, and Serph followed him out through the corridor and back up into the light.


End file.
